the greatest of which
by dragondark
Summary: Some part of him is still unsure. [post game] [Squall & Rinoa]


disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VIII, nor any of its characters. Any flaws in my portrayal, however, are obviously my own.  
notes: Squall's perspective, told in second-person as an experiment of sorts. My first attempt, so I'm a wee bit anxious over it.

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**the greatest of which**

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You are light to a decaying world.

Ultimecia has dragged them through a storm, broken their prides and left them walking in bare bones and fear. They're lost and straying in defeat, and it's easy for you to take control; easy for you to say, Do this, do that, go forth in peace and stop trampling into my Garden whenever you feel like it.

Because it _is_ your Garden. The commander's post is yours again, and every SeeD looks to you first for approval. Maybe you were afraid of people depending on you once, but it's fine now. It's even good.

At least it means that things will get done.

Still, there are days when you are blindly afraid of something you barely recognise. Days when the air is thick with it, when you are stifled and drowning and cannot speak, not even to say those scant words that they have come to rely on from you.

You want to run from her -- her full smile, her quick hands -- into the elevator and close it. Lock the shaft, ride the lift to the cockpit and break that, too. Wait in the closed space for the air to die, or for something to change -- until you can forget about everything that has ever happened below: every memory of freedom.

It's not freedom, really. How can anything be free when in each moment you can feel the cage reaching to drag you back in?

(You don't understand how she can treat every moment so carelessly; as if life is only a dance to be played through before waltzing elaborately through it again. As if you could create your own high kicks -- and _oh_, she said, doubled over with laughter, she'd pay a _lot_ to see _you_ do a high kick -- and no price would ever be forced.)

To appreciate what you have now is very easy when it is now, but somebody has to look to the future, and since she never will, it has to be you. And it's odd to think of a day when you'll wake without the knowledge of where she is swimming like a dream through your eyes. Odd to think that you could ever turn to say her name to an empty shadow, or reach for a place where nothing of her lingers.

But it has to happen. It's reality. It'll be her or you, and she seems so fragile at times that you know without a doubt, rigid down to your bones (until she pokes you in the side) with the knowledge that you'll have to carry on without her.

She's opened the world to you, but what does the world matter if she's not there?

And there are days when you think of the world as it will be after she's gone: a bleak and endless corridor, running windowlessly down to eternity. Waiting patiently and inexorably -- haunted by memories of how she spoke at this place on this day, how she moved -- to die.

The idea leaves you clenching your hands against your desk, straining to take up a gunblade and break the world into pieces you can recognise through their damage. You can do this: leave nothing whole in your wake. Give time nothing to take, when the chance comes.

At other times you think the solution could be almost easy: take a difficult assignment when you're old (and being old with her is an idea that twists in your veins -- you're not sure whether of contentment or of fear), which no one would dream of refusing you, because you're the sorceress' knight, the star SeeD whom no one will ever surpass. Find a way to die (and there are a thousand; most of which, you think, have already been used up against you) after completing your assignment: an accidental fall, a deadly battle with a monster too great for you to take alone.

If you hadn't discarded the idea in the first place because it was so stupid, you might have done so simply thinking of her expression in receiving the news: her body rocking stiffly against the chair, her feet swinging forth and back, and her face perfectly, utterly still.

You wouldn't trust her not to do something stupid, too. She has more to do it with: who knows what those strange sorcerous powers might perform when given an incentive?

(Irvine's brought you enough horror holoflicks - helps with cuddling time, he says, chuckling richly - for you to have a pretty clear idea about zombies, for instance. Namely, that you don't want them anywhere around the Garden. It might be good practice for the cadets, but zombies tend to multiply quickly into hordes, and you're not sure that untested cadets should be subjected to the fray. It could permanently damage their fighting styles.)

So you're happy now. For there are days, too, when this is driven entirely out of your mind, and misery seems to be a faraway thing, consigned to the objects of childhood and the first sharp pang of Sis' abandonment. You could almost forget - though you're always reminded by those sharp glints of humor and wonder in the eyes of your... friends - that life was ever like anything else.

That you were once different.

But always, always, you can trust this thought to return, nagging and eternal. Problems don't go away if no one fixes them, and it looks as if you've become the local problem-fixer.

(You don't know why they'd trust you to do this. You go out to save a single girl and in the process you save the world. Haven't they seen already that your track record with making problems smaller is not that great? Whatever.)

So you think of it, and you think -- if someone has to pay the price, well. It might as well be you.You're better at bearing burdens, and she has enough of them as it is, with people constantly whispering to her of power, of promises that she could fulfill in a heartbeat if she so desired.

And sometimes you feel as if you're not enough anymore. You can solve things with a gunblade, but you're not clever with words, and you don't know what Cid was talking about when he decided on the basis of leadership that you could take the Garden to its goal. You're not what a sorceress needs in her knight.

But there are hours when she leans her head on your shoulder to watch the setting of a distant sun, and you think -- well, damn the future, anyhow. The echo of warmth that her breath leaves on your skin, the memory of the tiny movement she makes when she smiles, is beyond any price that death or remembrance could name.

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**end**

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**feedback**: is ever appreciated. 


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